Motorola expanding Moto Maker to Europe in Q2, smartwatch later this year

Motorola might not have had anything to show us at MWC 2014, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything interesting to say. At a panel event Motorola’s senior vice president Rick Osterloh and other execs talked about the company’s plans for the Moto Maker, a next-gen smartwatch and even touched on the subject of the Lenovo buyout.

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During the event, Motorola discussed its plans to expand the Moto Maker to new countries. The expansion will start in Western Europe and Mexico, where the tool will rollout sometime in the second quarter of this year. Motorola didn’t get into any specifics about what other countries it might arrive in and where the customized handsets will be made, but this is still pretty big news. Up until now, Motorola only offered the Moto Maker in the U.S. market.

On the subject of a smarwatch, Motorola revealed that they will launch their own next-gen offering by the end of the year. Although Motorola didn’t go into specifics, Osterloh said the company plans to address battery life and style, something they feel other smarwatches fail in delivering. Here’s to hoping that such a device will also bring Moto Maker customization of some kind.

Lenovo is very interested in Motorola's current product portfolio

Finally, let’s address the elephant in the room: the Lenovo buyout. In terms of why Lenovo and Motorola and working together, Motorola reiterated the same sentiment we’ve heard before, which is that Lenovo has the expertise needed to turn Motorola into a major player in the Android world.

Of course what we really want to know is whether Lenovo will mess with the company’s current direction. The good news is that we’ve now received an answer — sort of. Motorola stated during their conference that Lenovo is very interested in their current product portfolio and Motorola hopes Lenovo will continue their current direction. Unfortunately, that’s a bit of a fuzzy answer. It seems to allude to the possibility that Lenovo will at least finish current products in Motorola’s line up before making any dramatic changes, but neither Lenovo or Motorola seems to be making any promises.

What do you think, are you excited to see what’s next from Motorola? Will Lenovo will get in the way of Motorola’s current direction, or will the Chinese handset and PC maker continue to follow Motorola’s existing mobile devices strategy?